The Internet provides access to a wide variety of content. Publishers of webpages and other types of first-party content often monetize their content by allowing sponsored third-party content (e.g., advertisements) to be integrated therewith. A programmatic Internet advertising system can be used to automate the selection and integration of third-party content with the first-party content. In certain programmatic Internet advertising systems, third-party content providers (e.g., advertisers) may be notified of an available impression (i.e., an opportunity to display an advertisement in conjunction with a webpage) and allowed to bid on the impression.
Interstitial content is a type of online content that is often displayed between webpages. Interstitial content can be used to introduce another page or site, to inform a user that the next page requires a login or is part of a different domain, to display advertisements, or for a variety of other informational and/or promotional uses. Interstitial content can include advertisements which are displayed temporally between two webpages. When a user clicks a link from a first webpage to a second webpage, an interstitial advertisement may be shown to the user before the second webpage is displayed. Interstitial advertisements can be very effective due to the full share-of-voice provided to advertisers.
One approach used by previous systems for presenting interstitial content is to load and render the interstitial content in response to a user clicking a link from a first webpage to a second webpage. Such an approach can result in substantial latency and delays the second webpage by the time spent loading and rendering the interstitial content. Another approach used by previous systems is to load the interstitial content after rending the content of the second webpage. In this approach, the interstitial content is presented over the publisher's content when the interstitial content is fully loaded (e.g., in a pop-up window). Both of these approaches offer a poor user experience and can result in high bounce rates.